“What is it, Lucy?”
“It’s to send Hazel for the winter to her grandmother Tyler’s.”
“To Alabama? Oh, Lucy, how could you! It’s so far away.”
“I know, but it’s a home in a beautiful place where she could be out-of-doors all day long. My husband used to tell me about the good times he had as a boy among the pines with plenty of space around him. He, like Hazel, would have hated to have been shut up in three rooms.”
“But it’s in the South,” Mrs. Perkins said earnestly. “We don’t know the South, Lucy, but I fear it with its jim-crow cars and its lynchings.”
“Don’t,” gasped Mrs. Tyler. Then, after a little, she laughed. “There are thousands and tens of thousands of colored children who grow up there in safety. Hazel will be under good care. Her grandmother will have more time to give to her than I.”
“Has she written for Hazel?”
“Not recently, but I know she would welcome her. She is alone just now, but she is always mothering some child. She will love Hazel, for Hazel is like her father in many ways. Perhaps living with her grandmother, she will learn to be still more like him. I cannot bear the thought of having her leave me, but I know that if she goes she will be in good hands.”
A tremendous noise issued from the room across the hall, and Hazel popped out her head to call, “He’s Shere Khan, a tiger of the jungle, and I’m Mowgli.”
“Come here and let me eat you, Little Frog,” called out the tiger, and made a hideous sound between a snarl and roar.